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Loss of long term memory

Posted on: March 4, 2008 - 1:42pm

carx

Posts: 247

Joined: 2008-01-02

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Loss of long term memory

Hi Id like to know the name of the disease or syndrome that prevents people from having long term memories. I have encountered 1 such a person and I remember reading that these people are incapable of learning or remembering for a long period of time. I remember reading something about an accident where the people are trapped in their pre-accident state and after a while all new memories are erased and they return to their base state. And it's not Alzheimer's, since they can remember the pre-accident past in every moment; however, the new in formations are getting erased.

There's not really a specific disease that gets to claim that symptom all to its own. Anyway, its anterograde amnesia, pretty much the opposite of retrograde amnesia which is what you probably think of when you hear the word "amnesia" (ie the inability to recall old memories but the ability to form new memories is still intact). Various things can cause anterograde amnesia including:

- Alzheimer's disease: it causes loss of all memory, new and old- Korskaff's syndrome: very much like alzheimer's except that its caused by vitamin B1 deficiency (usually as a result of heavy lifelong drinking)- Brain damage: This tends to be the only time you see purely anterograde amnesia (at least to my knowledge). What has to happen is that a specific part of the hippocampus (the part of the brain that stores declarative memories) is destroyed resulting in the brain being unable to transfer information from short term to long term memory. There's several case studies about this. There was one little boy who underwent brain surgery in an effort to treat his epilepsy. The treatment worked but had the unintended side effect of preventing any new memories from being formed. So this kid pretty much thought he was 10 for the rest of his life (which as you could imagine led to some rather emotional moments whenever he saw himself in the mirror). There's also the case of some college student who was studying when his roommate came in with a sword and goofed around but accidentally impaled the kid's brain in the process. The result was that the kid was eternally trapped studying math for the rest of his life. Interestingly in anterograde amnesia due to brain damage people are still able to learn new tasks (since the hippocampus doesn't store those types of memories).

There's not really a specific disease that gets to claim that symptom all to its own. Anyway, its anterograde amnesia, pretty much the opposite of retrograde amnesia which is what you probably think of when you hear the word "amnesia" (ie the inability to recall old memories but the ability to form new memories is still intact). Various things can cause anterograde amnesia including:

- Alzheimer's disease: it causes loss of all memory, new and old- Korskaff's syndrome: very much like alzheimer's except that its caused by vitamin B1 deficiency (usually as a result of heavy lifelong drinking)- Brain damage: This tends to be the only time you see purely anterograde amnesia (at least to my knowledge). What has to happen is that a specific part of the hippocampus (the part of the brain that stores declarative memories) is destroyed resulting in the brain being unable to transfer information from short term to long term memory. There's several case studies about this. There was one little boy who underwent brain surgery in an effort to treat his epilepsy. The treatment worked but had the unintended side effect of preventing any new memories from being formed. So this kid pretty much thought he was 10 for the rest of his life (which as you could imagine led to some rather emotional moments whenever he saw himself in the mirror). There's also the case of some college student who was studying when his roommate came in with a sword and goofed around but accidentally impaled the kid's brain in the process. The result was that the kid was eternally trapped studying math for the rest of his life. Interestingly in anterograde amnesia due to brain damage people are still able to learn new tasks (since the hippocampus doesn't store those types of memories).

Corporeal has hit it on the money with this one.

If you are thinking of anything resembling the movie Memento, then you are definitely thinking Brain Damage. The most famous case being the patient H.M.

There's not really a specific disease that gets to claim that symptom all to its own. Anyway, its anterograde amnesia, pretty much the opposite of retrograde amnesia which is what you probably think of when you hear the word "amnesia" (ie the inability to recall old memories but the ability to form new memories is still intact). Various things can cause anterograde amnesia including:

- Alzheimer's disease: it causes loss of all memory, new and old- Korskaff's syndrome: very much like alzheimer's except that its caused by vitamin B1 deficiency (usually as a result of heavy lifelong drinking)- Brain damage: This tends to be the only time you see purely anterograde amnesia (at least to my knowledge). What has to happen is that a specific part of the hippocampus (the part of the brain that stores declarative memories) is destroyed resulting in the brain being unable to transfer information from short term to long term memory. There's several case studies about this. There was one little boy who underwent brain surgery in an effort to treat his epilepsy. The treatment worked but had the unintended side effect of preventing any new memories from being formed. So this kid pretty much thought he was 10 for the rest of his life (which as you could imagine led to some rather emotional moments whenever he saw himself in the mirror). There's also the case of some college student who was studying when his roommate came in with a sword and goofed around but accidentally impaled the kid's brain in the process. The result was that the kid was eternally trapped studying math for the rest of his life. Interestingly in anterograde amnesia due to brain damage people are still able to learn new tasks (since the hippocampus doesn't store those types of memories).

Thanks for the feed back well the anterograde amnestia sound peaty much like that what I’m looping for. However I have a problem wit the patient learning new tasks since I have encountered a girl unable to remember future things including learning I think , since she was astound every time buy the fact that You can turn on the light. Is this countingfor new task ? Or did she have more funny syndromes in one box.